How can people enhance their wellbeing during the Coronovirus pandemic?
Dr. Laurie Santos (pictured) has been meeting with several news outlets, sharing evidence-based tips from her psychology of well-being class at Yale University. A version of the course is also offered on Coursera.
In the Twitter-embedded video here, produced by the World Economic Forum, Dr. Santos covers five tips for coping during the pandemic. In this space, I'm going to quote moments from the video, and you can practice classifying the claims and describing how the studies would have been conducted. The first three of these tips are also covered in this story from the World Economic Forum.
Tip 1: Keep social, even when socially distancing
Dr. Santos states in her segment that "Happy people spend more time with other people in general. They also prioritize time with their friends and family members"
a) What kind of claim is it to say that "happy people spend more time with other people in general"--frequency, association, or cause? What are the variables in this claim?
b) What kind of study was likely conducted to support this claim--correlational or experimental?
c) Sketch a scatterplot with well-labeled axes that could depict this result.
Tip 2: Help others
To explain this tip, Dr. Santos mentions, "The research shows that doing random acts of kindness...can be incredibly powerful." For example, happy people are giving money to charity and volunteering in their communities.
d) What kind of claim is it to say that "doing random acts of kindness...can make you happy"--frequency, association, or cause? What are the variables in this claim?
e) What kind of study would need to be conducted to support this claim--correlational or experimental?
f) Can you imagine how you might manipulate the variable, "doing random acts of kindness?"
Tip 3: Move--even if you can't leave your house
In this section, she says, "Exercise and moving your body is really correlated with improved well-being"
g) The verb, "correlated" gives this one away: It's an association claim. Dr. Santos specifies that they are "really correlated," which seems to suggest a strong effect size. What factors do we consider when we're trying to decide if a correlation (an effect size) is strong versus weak?
Tip 4: Savor everyday pleasures
"Research suggests that happy people tend to be more mindful. They tend to savor the present moment; they tend to be in the present moment" Here Dr. Santos also strongly recommends taking deep breaths to calm the vagus nerve and connect to the present.
h) How might you design an experiment to test the hypothesis that deep breathing can improve people's well-being during quarantine? Whom might you recruit for such a study? How would you operationalize each of the two variables? What results would you expect to find?
Tip 5: Think about how you want to look back on this time
Finally, she shares one of my favorite tips for emotional regulation, psychological distancing: "Psychological distancing is the idea that if we think about ourselves and how we will have dealt with this crisis in the future...Think about how you want to tell your grandkids you lived through COVID-19, you don't want to be like, 'I panicked-bought and hoarded toilet paper..no, you want the story to be positive...'"
Experimental research has supported the causal claim that self-distancing--seeing yourself as though you are a fly on the wall, or even imagining looking back on yourself from the future--is associated with improved emotional regulation. It helps us take a cooler, less impulsive view of our emotions and process them instead of ruminating. For example, self-distancing helps people manage feelings of anger in constructive ways (here's a nice summary).
i) Review the term translational research in your textbook (Ch 1) and explain how we might conduct translational research on psychological distancing during the pandemic. What is the basic research it is based on? What is the real-world context it's being translated to? And what kind of study could translate--that is, bridge the gap--between the two?
